wasp

Never really understood the thing about women and shoes, fortunately my wife is not into shoe shopping, but I have known women who get a total RUSH out of shoe shopping. Why? I just really don't care what brand or whatever of shoes. Me, I hardly got any shoes cos I HATE shoe shopping! :lol:

Edit. Double post.

Mines about 80 x's but it's a smaller tank. I think in a bigger tank you can get away with less cos you can make it do more, ie if you got a pump putting out a certain velocity in a small tank, it will do the same in a bigger tank but the flow will go further. So for example in my tank, a 4 footer, in order to get flow into all the cracks & crannies I have had to put quite a few pumps around the place pointing in different directions, and some of them counteract each other. So from that point of view the x amount of times flow thing does not nessecarily apply in all tanks, it is still a good starting point though for a beginner in the hobby to have at least a rough idea what is required. BTW I did want to have sand in my tank and actually put some in, but it was impossible, just got blown into a couple of big heaps and the rest of the tank bottom was bare so I syphoned it out. Not sure I fully buy that BB tanks are more dirty, the dirt can be seen, but can be syphoned, whereas in a tank with sand it would dissapear into the sand and remain in the tank. Having said that it is true there are some awesome tanks with sand, Iwans is a stunning example and has a Deep Sand Bed. The overall management of the tank is important and may be able to take advantage of the positives in having sand and outweigh the negatives. I think you raised a good point about the rock cooking thing reef, and one that has not really been said before on this forum. While cooking is probably beneficial especially if starting with rock that is really filthy, it has to be said there are people who have cooked rock for many months till it just couldn't get cooked any more, and then when they set up their tank they still had nutrient / algae problems anyway. It's probably again, more about the overall long term tank management.

That, plus any substrate can harbour dirt. Which can be a good or bad thing depending what you are keeping, and what you are trying to do.

If you wish, but i doubt you will notice much/anything.

The Stop Parasites has been posted. It claims to be reef safe but i have found it can make some of the corals sulk a bit but not kill them. The instructions are on the bottle but the basic idea is you dose it every 3 days. It works by attacking the free swimming stage plus will make some, but not all, the cysts drop off. It does not completely eradicate the whitespot from the tank, but you do the full course of treatment as per the label instructions, and this buys the fish enough time to develop immunity. Do a double dose first day only, and you should see the fish improve within a few days. It is important to follow the dosing schedule exactly. Myself and others have had good success with this product, but unfortunately it is now illegal to import it.

Fmxmatt, pm me your address. I will send you a bottle of stuff called Stop Parasite, it should solve it just follow the instructions on the bottle. I can send it today. Just send it back once you finished.

Hmmm yes well if it's that bad may have to remove for treatment.

Well i think this is getting a little drastic, wouldn't be too much hurry to rush in to all that myself. It will be ich irritans, if it was marine velvet you would have deaths by now. Death from ich irritans happens, but nearly all fish eventually recover, horrible as it is to watch while they have it. Can you post a pic of the BT so we can see how bad it is? Also, if in the morning it is badly infested, is it slightly less infested by late afternoon?

They will attach themselves, if they don't like where they are they can move, within reason.

Thanks . Funny thing about nature, all those beautiful things hidden under the sea!

The BT will develop immunity provided it survives long enough to do that. Wether to remove for treatment or not is one of those catch 22 things, if he is already near death the move can finish him off. But TheConches tank is probably well set up, and if the move can be done with little stress then it may be a good choice. But on the other hand if you just leave him he may recover. It's just one of those unknowns.

It's not a huge drop in salinity so you could do it in one hit if you have to, but it will be stressful for some things, spinning it out over a longer time frame would be better. Basically you would remove around 10% of the water, then top up with fresh. Some invertibrates start getting into trouble at 1.021, so don't overdo it. 1.022 is OK though, some people keep their tanks at that all the time, although personally i wouldn't recommend it. Wow, that's devotion! Although I guess it would be easier in FW than SW.

Ha Ha! Yes that is what mine normally makes, sandy looking stuff. No I didn't get the blue one, maybe one day! That browny looking coral in the pic to the urchins immediate right can go blue, but conditions have to be absolutely perfect, it's a hard one. As with most blue ones I guess.

The way to do it would be to put water in from the origional tank, and some cured rock, both for filtration plus a hiding place for the fish so he will feel comfortable. Just 1/2 fill the tank. Then over a 3 day period add fresh water to reduce salinity to 1.013. Don't fresh water dip the fish, this can have some limited effect with marine velvet, but does not kill cysts of ich irritans. Just moving the fish can help because if the rock comes from a different tank, there will be no new parasites to keep infesting it, at least until the ones that are on it complete their lifecycle. So provided he is not already too far gone, a cure using this method is on the cards. BTW I once read an article about a completely chemical free way to treat fish for whitespot, the fish are moved each 3 days to a new tank. This is less than the whitespot need to complete their lifecycle so the fish does not get reinfested and gets cured. From memory they said this only has to be done 3 times, although I have seen whitespot cysts last longer than that so a bit more time may be needed. BTW if you do put the fish in a very low salinity, when you return it to normal salinity, do it slowly, over at the least a week and preferably longer. Fish can tolerate salinity being reduced faster than what they can salinity being raised.

Yes I suspect you are right, the other thing is that it climbed up a coral to do this, when I saw it I wondered why it had gone up there. Then this happened i think it may have climbed up to get good dispersal. Pity I don't have a male & female of them wouldn't it be cool to have lots of little babies coming on! And now I think about it, many years ago in my home town of Gisborne we would dive for kinas to eat, and the milky stuff that sometimes came out of the row looked just like the stuff it ejected.

Yes it is and it's a BEAUTY! Not sure how well you recall but it was not direct from your tank, you gave a very large frag to Craig (Paremoremo) which had several branches. He broke a branch off and gave it to me, as soon as it went in my tank it started sending out multiple branches, what an awesome coral!! It is quite a brittle coral though and due to my tendency to fiddle has been broken and knocked around a few times but has still turned into a really nice piece. Not growing out the top of the water like yours yet but i'm sure will eventually happen.

The steps you have taken above are all the right things, all you can really do now is wait and hope. One thing, when they are covered in whitespot they have trouble maintaining their osmotic balance as salt from the higher salinity water outside keeps creeping in by osmosis through the holes. It is often this that eventually kills them. Reducing salinity will help the fish and also make it feel better. If it was in a fish only system you could reduce salinity down to about 1.016, or even lower, which would enhance the fish chance of survival. But because you have invertebrates that is not an option, but salinity could be reduced over 2 or 3 hours to 1.022. It is only a small measure but every little thing can help. It is really a case of trying to keep the fish alive as long as possible to allow it to start resisting the whitespot.

This one doesn't eat coral although it does have a very occasional nibble. It mostly eats algae and when that's a bit thin it eats coraline algae, then coral if it's really hungry. I used to have another similar looking one but slightly different that only ate coraline, but the 2 urchins combined needed more food than my tank could provide. Once it got through all the coraline it started eating coral big time so i gave it away. (The coraline eating one that is). The white stuff coming out came out in spurts, at first thread like but then dispursed into the water, here is (i think) a better pic.

Well Markoshark came over today to kindly sort something on my computer, and afterwards we were looking at the tank when all of a sudden the urchin started blowing off this white milky stuff, coming in powerful jets from 4 holes in its back. But not the anal sack. Ended up making the whole tank a murky white. I think it might have been spawning anyone know about this stuff? I've seen it pass excrement before but it's usually little pellet type things, nothing like this!

Very nice. Bit frustrating not being able to read German though! He's often been accussed of photoshopping, but going by the fish colours I don't think it's been excessively photoshoped. IMHO anyway. Does he still use zeovit?

Well congrats on your clownfish laying eggs! You feed them live rotifers. However the whole thing is a lot of work and near enough impossible. But if you get a live rotifer culture it can be done, but it's not easy.

Another thought also is that growth and health in cleaner shrimps can be affected by a flatworm that infests them, can be seen as dark blobs under the shell, mostly in the same section the legs come off.

Could be that if one is still small, it is not fully developed and sexually mature yet. Could try hand feeding perhaps? Use a long pair of tongs or similar so you don't have to put your hand in the tank.

If you set up the fans tonight you may be pleasantly surprised how much help they are.